The escalating conflict between warring military forces in Sudan is overshadowed by media and policy attention to Ukraine. Yet Sudan's location and its humanitarian crisis merit urgent and sustained attention. As Africa's third largest country, Sudan borders seven other nations in a strategic and troubled region, where instability could intensify, with the possibility of spilling into the adjoining Red Sea, disrupting shipping and trade through the Suez Canal.
Sudan's capital, Khartoum - a major metropolis - has suffered massive destruction. Severe food shortages are projected to affect more than 19 million Sudanese if the current fighting is not curbed in the next two to three months. The United Nations says the "catastrophic" situation has put an estimated 25 million people - more than half Sudan's population - in need of aid and protection.
West Darfur "has been the site of some of the worst atrocities since the conflict in Khartoum started in mid-April", said Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis and conflict researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in an interview with AllAfrica.
Today HRW has issued a report on the escalating violence in Darfur, an area that captured attention twenty years ago for the brutality of attacks on civilians and the expressions of ethnic hatred towards its darker skinned population. The perpetrators were never held accountable, and a leader of those attacks is now one of Sudan's warring generals.
"With Sudan's long history of violence without punishment, its spiral into conflict was predictable, but it didn't have to be inevitable," said HRW Executive Director Tirana Hassan in an article for Just Security. Against the backdrop of impunity for atrocities, she wrote, "Sudan's descent into armed conflict this year and the tactics used are eerily familiar".
Today's report, compiled over months of investigations, primarily along Darfur's border with Chad, details the killings and looting carried out in West Darfur. Mohamed Osman, a Sudanese scholar and researcher in HRW's Africa division who conducted many of the interviews with refugees, told AllAfrica that "the risk of the region spiraling into further atrocities is real".
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"The magnitude of the violence since April in Darfur is significant even in a region that has witnessed countless atrocities against civilians for two decades, the report says. " Over 400,000 Darfuris were already refugees in Chad as a result of earlier violence."
HRW is calling for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the recent West Darfur attacks. "The Prosecutor should highlight investigation plans during his scheduled briefing to the Security Council on July 13", the report urges.
The question now is whether the international community will be content with extracting grudging peace pledges from war leaders, who are benefiting from Sudan's wealth, including its gold. Or will there be greater insistence on accountability for what the HRW report calls 'war crimes', and a firm commitment to end the cycles of violence.
